19 July, 2016

2 weeks in poland
1 week home getting over 2 weeks in poland (see above) and getting ready for 2 weeks in ontario (see below)
2 weeks in ontario, helping parents empty their house of their many, many, many, MANY possessions in preparation for eventual sale of said house and move back west to be where the family is

being here in ontario, a place that has never been my home (my parents flew the coop and left me behind in edmonton - this has only ever been a place of occasional visits), has for some reason unravelled my tightly controlled positivity about living in the US. perhaps it's being back in canada that does it. the fact that i breathe better here (metaphorically, not physically; the air in texas is just fine, y'all), the fact that this country (if not this province) is my home, all came together and made me get all manner of melancholy. i'm suddenly missing aspects of living in western canada that until now i never found particularly special or of any particular importance.

and so, under the influence of said melancholy musings, i started a conversation with a friend on facebook. a friend who is a decade or so younger but roughly a century more experienced and a thousandfold more driven. the type of woman who is not only working 70 hours a week, but also sitting on 5 committees, volunteering for 14 organizations, and chairing 3 charitable women's groups. on top of which, her weekends make mine look like those of a hibernating sloth with a glandular deficiency. whenever i tagged along with her, i would make it home at an ungodly hour, having consumed vast quantities of liquor in multiple venues of varying chicness. and then, when all i wanted to do the following day is to gently moan on my chaise longue, she'd want to do it again.

this powerhouse has for some reason taken a shine to me. she thinks i'm aces. so when i casually asked her if the sexy company she now works for was hiring, she immediately jumped on it, immediately talked to her boss (even though it was sunday), and immediately told me to send my CV to him directly. my response to this was to immediately fall headfirst into an anxiety attack. thank gods my mother has a stash of benzodiazepines that i can access sans delay and judgment. my reaction to this... this nothing, really, since nothing has been promised and nothing has been done, is ridiculous, but alas, this is my response, ridiculous or not.

both my response (the ridiculous one, yes) and the situation have made me think and you, gentle reader, are as usual the happy recipient of my outpourings. let this set the stage for what i've come up with. for now, i shall leave you with this, and return forthwith to finish my lengthy CV, so i can stop hyperventilating and move to full fledged panic.

i know. oh, i know. as for antarctica, that is precisely where i want to be. with those damn penguins. how about you and i occasionally meet for tea, but for the most part just look out at the soothing sea of black and white and pretend we're all alone?